Devil Rest Your Soul
by Scarlett Burns
Summary: Post Season 4 fic. Lucifer and hell are changing rapidly, and he doesn't know how or why, but the results could be disastrous. Meanwhile, Chloe's most recent case takes a turn into the supernatural, and she finds herself in desperate need of her celestial partner.


**Devil Rest Your Soul  
**By Scarlett Burns**  
**

Summary:

Post Season 4 fic.

Lucifer and hell are changing rapidly, and he doesn't know how or why, but the results could be disastrous.

Meanwhile, Chloe's most recent case takes a turn into the supernatural, and she finds herself in desperate need of her celestial partner. 

* * *

Hell was _his _again.

Not that it ever was not. Hell could never be anyone else's, try as he might to deny it. He could leave, he could let someone else take the mantle, if he found an angel crazy enough to agree to such a thing... but it would always be _his_.

Lucifer knew it, because Hell was in his soul, irrevocably entwined throughout his very being. It was icy fingers gripping blazing hot light. A constant incessant burning, a war within his very soul that shaped the realm he ruled.

Hell mirrors him; a mix of bitterly cold desolation that stretches on into infinity, and raging infernos that will be ablaze for eternity.

Hell was much like the universe he set alight eons ago, yet thought of much more fondly than hell by... well, everyone; the impossible cold of the empty spaces, the incredible heat of suns, and everything in between had created something beautiful. Something that allowed life to exist on many planets... including his favorite, Earth.

_'You're welcome, Father,' _Lucifer thought, bitterly.

**Still so prideful, Samael.**

A gasp escapes his lips and he grips the cold stone throne beneath him with a supernatural strength. It cracks beneath his grip, and the sound echoes an impossibly long distance; perhaps throughout the entirety of his domain even, he was too startled and disturbed to be sure.

His mind had to be playing tricks on him now, surely, for dear ol' Dad would never speak to him directly, not anymore.

Could he go stark-raving mad? Because honestly, it was probably a development that was long overdue.

Lucifer closes his eyes with a sad sigh. Hell was everything his stars were not, but in the end even he had to recognize it was all from the same source; himself. He was free will and desire, and he was death and punishment. He was the bringer of light, and he was the destroyer.

And wasn't that an incredibly cruel torture, far better then one he'd ever devised in all his eons punishing the worst of the worst, to have a single being embody two forces that should never be one?

What sort of monster did that make him, worthy of such a terrible punishment?

Taking a deep and steadying breath, Lucifer forces himself to relax his grip on the throne and _listens_. Since his return to Hell, and the punishment he'd wrought on certain unruly demons immediately after, his realm had been in balance; at least, in as much balance as hell was capable of. But now, as he sat high above the demons toiling away at their tasks and the souls being eternally punished he felt... something _wrong_.

Very wrong.

_Cosmically_ wrong.

Standing, his wings unfurled quickly in response, feathered and glowing against the blue-gray darkness. He stretched them wide, for a moment reveling in the feeling of them being free from where he so often kept them hidden.

_'Tell me,'_ he commanded his domain in his mother tongue, eyes blazing as he did something he hadn't needed to do in millennia; pulling down the barriers he had placed he opened his soul to the very fabric of Hell so that they could speak.

It hit him like a cosmic freight train, and it was all he could do to keep himself from falling off the rocky spire that his throne sat atop. Crying out, he gripped his hair and pulled, wings flaring out in a posture poised for battle.

He felt like he was breaking into pieces. Sections of hell were collapsing in on themselves, silencing the souls and demons within them. He couldn't see it from where he stood... which meant it was in the furthest and deepest reaches of hell, but he could _feel _it and he hadn't felt such torment since his Fall.

Souls. Souls by the millions were dying in their cells.

It wasn't possible. He couldn't have done this. Not anymore, and certainly not by accident.

**Destroyer.**

He cried out in denial, no. NO.

Hell's energy flowed through him like lightening through a conductor, and it cried in sheer agony, begging him to stop. The choir of countless souls screamed, tearing through him before being abruptly silenced for eternity.

"Nooooooo!" he bellowed, tears falling from blazing eyes, his voice losing all human pretense, shifting to that all encompassing, resonating power that only an angel could possess.

The silence that followed his command was nearly unbearable.

* * *

It was so hot Chloe could barely think. She couldn't remember the last time Los Angeles had been this hot for a week straight; temperatures in the triple digits, and it wasn't just LA that was well above it's average temperature... it was everywhere. It had come on suddenly and persisted, at levels that even global warming couldn't explain. Scientists were at a loss, all that seemed to be known for sure was that the sun was burning hotter than normal.

It wasn't exactly reassuring.

Whatever the case, with heat came crazy... and as much as she wanted to do nothing but stay sequestered somewhere with the A/C on full blast she had a job to do, and her job was busier then ever.

Also, getting weirder by the day, if this latest crime scene was any indication. Not for the first time a sharp pang of grief hit her. She missed Lucifer and so help her, all his Lucifer-ness, and not just because 'weird' might as well have been his middle name.

As she took in the crime scene before her she had the distinct impression he'd be particularly helpful on this case.

A man, mid-thirties, sat slumped in his computer chair, throat ruthlessly slit from one side to the other. Blood was everywhere, and there was absolutely no mystery as to what his cause of death was. He'd clearly bled out.

Gruesome as it was, that wasn't what drew her attention. No, it was the sentence that was scratched into the walls, covering every spare inch.

"Have mercy, Samael." Over and over and over again. Like a child in detention forced to repeatedly write a phrase on a chalkboard... this same plea - from what she could only assume was the killer - was written everywhere. Walls, furniture, the door, and even the glass on the window.

Chloe couldn't help but notice the name also sounded very... angelic, and the thought made her extremely uneasy.

"Muy loco, right?!" Ella's excited voice exclaimed, jolting Chloe out of her thoughts. She spun around to face the energetic forensic scientist with a frown, nodding as she continued to study the messy, frantic scratchings dominating the room.

"It's definitely weird," Chloe agreed. "Can you imagine how long this would have taken someone to do after they killed our vic?"

_Hours_, she thought to herself. It was _insane_. She really hoped she was wrong about the name being that of an angel. If it was an angel's name... she either had an insane religious fanatic on her hands, or she was getting embroiled in a supernatural case that she was not equipped to handle without her celestial partner.

Neither option sounded appealing right now.

Unfortunately, it didn't take but a moment for Ella to dispel any hopes she had. "Not exactly an angel name you hear too often, eh?" Ella asked, pulling her camera out of its bag. "Bet Lucifer would have gotten a kick out of this one," she continued, almost to herself as she she proceeded to attach the flash.

Ella looked immediately regretful at bringing Lucifer up, probably having noticed how much it hurt Chloe whenever she mentioned him, but didn't apologize for the comment as she turned on her camera and adjusted some settings.

Chloe pushed off the sadness as best she could, unwilling to let it effect the job more then it already had. "Because it's an angel's name?"

Ella chuckled, then made her way closer to the body. "Yeah, _his_ angel name... in some faiths, anyway."

"What!?" Chloe all but yelped. That wasn't what she'd expected at all.

Ella shrugged and snapped a couple pictures. "Yeah, I mean... Lucifer isn't really a name, it's a title, and even if it wasn't, it isn't an angel name either. So you have to wonder what Lucifer's name actually is." A couple odd looks from some nearby techs had her hastily add, "I mean, if you believe in all that stuff... not speaking of _our_ Lucifer of course."

"Light-bringer..." Chloe stated. All this time, she'd simply been calling Lucifer by his title. His nickname of 'Detective' for her made even more sense now.

Ella nodded.

Chloe frowned. "If it's the angelic name of the devil, why haven't I ever heard it before?"

Shrugging, Ella put down the camera. "Some believe it, some don't. But it makes sense that the devil would have had a name in line with the other angels before he fell."

Chloe hummed thoughtfully, outwardly trying to keep her composure even as her heart hammered in her chest. "Guess I'll be doing some digging tonight," she said, half to herself, but loud enough for Ella to nod in agreement as she continued to work the scene.

She'd be paying Amenadiel and Linda a visit, tonight.

* * *

Once Lucifer had regained his equilibrium from Hell's onslaught, he stood tall again, taking several deep breaths, trying to silence his mind enough to think. As he did so it became clear that power he hadn't felt in eons ran through him once again, barely containable, and there was no explanation for its sudden return.

It terrified him.

And if the current commotion down below him was any indication, it terrified all the demons as well. Some perished where hell collapsed, and the rest were all making their way towards him, drawn to the power and light like moths to a flame. They grunted and exclaimed, called his name; some in lust, some in awe, all in fear.

He exhaled a long breath, gathering himself for what he must do next. "Kneel!" he commanded in the guttural and harsh tones of the Lilim, his voice pure _Power and Will_ that the demons had no choice but to obey, and they did.

He didn't have to explain to them that they were to stay that way until he said otherwise, and the power radiating off him now convinced them that to disobey at this moment was suicide.

Diving off his towering throne spire, he let himself drop for several seconds, gaining speed, the sensation distracting him from his troubled thoughts for a brief moment, before opening his wings wide and letting the air take him up again. He locked onto the place where hell screamed its pain the loudest and flew himself there, to the furthest reaches of hell, and then dived down, down, down into The Pit.

He landed in the center of the deepest pit heavily, shaking the ground and making a crater with the sheer force of his arrival. In this place, where the worst of the worst were kept, it was pitch black, and even the glow of his wings barely broke through it's inky, thick darkness.

Summoning on his newly returned powers, Lucifer held out his hand, reached into the very fabric of reality and pulled; just a slight tug, and the energy from his favorite star crossed through the realms and nestled into his open hand at his gentle call. The stars were, after all, his creation. He loved them and missed them after being separated from their brilliant light for so long, and the warm feeling he got in return told him that they had missed him as well.

As is so common in his very long life, that feeling of love and warmth was fleeting. What he saw all around him made his blood run cold.

The starlight he held in his palm lit up the pitch black space, just as his stars and suns did in the blackness of the universe itself. To hold such hot, volatile energy would incinerate almost any other being, celestial or not. To look upon it in such close quarters could burn a soul into nothing. But there was nothing here. Not anymore.

Hell had crumbled all right, but there was no rubble remaining to be seen or souls remaining to be saved. He was now looking at a black hole that knew nothing except to devour, a crack turned into a chasm, and the poor, twisted souls it swallowed had instantly ceased to be.


End file.
